If you do a google search for raw milk and Russian Roulette, you will see that these two go together like salt and pepper. Even the head of the FDA, John Sheehan, said recently that drinking raw milk was "like playing Russian Roulette with your health."
Russian Roullette, is of course the often lethal "game" popularized in The Deer Hunter, where one bullet is placed in a revolver's cylinder, the cylinder is spun, the revolver is put up against the player's head and the trigger is pulled. The player's odds of killing himself are one in six, so when someone says something is like playing Russian Roulette, I'm very unlikely to do that something.
And, Wisconsin Governor Doyle recenlty cited these same safety concerns when he recently vetoed legislation that would have lifted the ban of raw milk in Wisconsin.
So let's look at the numbers: Between 1998 and 2008 there were 85 raw milk related outbreaks reported to the CDC, which resulted in 1,614 illnesses, 187 hospitalizations, and two deaths.
Of course, the CDC only gets wind of an outbreak if several people get sick at the same place at the same time. So, for the sake of argument, let's double the numbers for that ten year period and figure it on a per-year basis. That comes out to 269 illnesses a year, 37 hospitalizations, and .4 deaths a year.
It is estimated that one percent of the U.S. population drinks raw milk, which comes out to 3.07 million people. So, every year about .0089% of raw milk drinkers get sick, .0012% get hospitalized, and .000013% die.
Another way to look at is if you lined up 8 million people and gave them all raw milk over a year, one would die.
For comparison sake, over a similar one year period the odds of dying in car crash are one 6,500, dying in plane crash are one in 400,000 over a year, and being struck and killed by lighting are one in 6.2 million.
So, yes, you literally have a better chance of dying from getting struck by lightening that you do from drinking raw milk-- hardly the "Russian Roulette" described by the FDA.
In fact, for comparison purposes, let's look at eggs. According to the CDC, eggs cause food poisoning severe enough to require 1,440 to be hospitalized each year and 75 resulting in death each year. (75 deaths?!? We must ban eggs!) OK, but if look at the odds, dying of egg-related food poisoning is pretty remote: .000031% But, this .000031% is still over twice the risk of dying from raw milk over a year!
What really makes all this stink is the backdrop of monopolistic milk processors recently paying dairy farmers near-record LOW milk prices, charging consumers near-record HIGH milk prices and all the while swindling near-record high profits for themselves. In fact, recently the DOJ filed a antitrust suit against Dean Foods-- Wisconsin's main milk processor-- for their monopolistic and predatory business practices.
As long as we're talking about odds, I would say the odds are that the milk processors and their powerful lobby had more to do with keeping farmers from selling and consumers from buying raw milk than phony safety concerns.
Now, more than ever, dairy farmers and consumers need someone to stand up for them. I hope the Wisconsin legislature does just that and overrides Governor Doyle's veto and I hope that if this issue comes up in your state, your policy makers won't be hoodwinked by phony health concerns.